Ok decided to do a then and now. Picked up my Canon 60D pretty much two years ago in February 2011. Photo on left from Anime Conji 2011. Photo on right from Magi photoshoot last weekend (currently unreleased)

I'm posting this here to show those who are just starting out how much progress can be made. It's nuts how much progress can be made in such a time span. But in order to do so practice practice practice. When at cons dont be afraid to walk up to cosplayers for photoshoots, experiment on your own time and keep at it.

I'm also curious to see other photographer's Then and now photos. feel free to post up here

I like this thread and I'll join in the fun. I've always been a big fan of posting my pictures here on this website so people can look through my images and see a clear progression of my skills over the past few years. I don't feel like resizing these images, so I'm just going to link to them for those who are interested. The first image you won't find on my profile because I took it before I even made this coscom account.

This image is when I used film and was taken in 2006. Yes, I use to use black and white film in Anaheim and manual focus EVERYTHING. Those things have changed now and this is a representation of my current work.

So you can see a clear difference. You can browse through my pictures on my profile. It starts with my purchase of a Rebel XTI and my transition into digital in 2007. Then I stopped doing manual focus and starting using auto focus. 2009 was my last year of doing strictly photography and in 2010 I started to play with photomanipulation. You can see this with my Mortal Kombat shoot and a few other shots. Then in 2011 I started doing a lot more photomanipulation. You can see a lot more of the images from 2011 use extensive editing, some are very novel attempts, but even from the 2011 photos you can see a huge jump from this to this. And now I'm working on 2012 and developing my skills in the direction I want. Once I started doing heavy editing, my understanding of lighting, physics, and other photo mechanics have improved drastically. I feel my development from 2006-2010 has been minimal, but my development from 2011-2012 has BEEN HUGE.

There are some drawbacks though. I feel I sacrificed taking good stand alone photos in 2012 because I was looking to take photos specifically for post processing. In 2011 and 2010 I focused on taking the best photo I could, but in 2012 I put less emphasis on composition, and just tried to get shots that I knew I'd be able to fit into a variety of backgrounds. Now, I didn't completely abandon my style of photography, this is one of my favorite photos from 2012, but I know a lot of the pics I've posted would be boring if it wasn't for the photomanipulation. Next year I'm going to try and merge the 2 different styles a bit more. Generally a well composed photo doesn't need editing and that's the challenge, balancing composition and photomanipulation so that one doesn't over power the other. I miss some of my former simplicity, but being stuck with the same backgrounds at AX for the last 4 or 5 years I feel really stagnates my photography, which is part of the reason why I've transitioned into photomanipulation.

Haha, I guess one of my very first photos of people were taken with my old point and shoot, which is this photo back in 2007. :3
And the most recent shoot I had was last week as for fun, which is this one:

Because I had so many photos to choose from, I made a tumblr post with photos of different years (sometimes months) and camera. :3 LOL I still got lots to learn!

Dragon*Con 1998 (not really focused on cosplay, more about convention coverage, etc.) - This was a scanned in photo shot on film with some point-n-shoot camera. I just liked the little kid's awestruck expression at seeing Stormtroopers in real life.

I think this was one of the last cosplay photos I took at AWA 2012 in September (been shooting other non-cosplay stuff since then):

This is a great thread! It really gives me soo much confidence that i will someday will be a great cosplay photographer! I just need to practice practice practice!! I started cosplay photography the summer of 2012

Sometimes the newer photos are noticeably better than the earlier photos, but other times, I think they are either about the same quality or not as good as the first image, in some or many ways. hmmmm....

Sometimes the newer photos are noticeably better than the earlier photos, but other times, I think they are either about the same quality or not as good as the first image, in some or many ways. hmmmm....

Honestly, I like that first one you posted of Akusesu better than the other three. I think in your case you already had photography down by the time you started attending conventions, so it's not really fair to expect some vast difference or change in style.

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Another then and now. This time my first Anime Central (2003) and most recent (2012) in one of the more difficult places to take photos, the dealers room. It's funny, I did ask the girl in the first one for a photo, but that's how she posed.

I've really enjoyed looking at everyone's posts. It's fun to see how much we've progressed.

Here's my contribution. First one was taken at Anime Central in 2007. Had bad color balance, horrid composition, and the focus is very soft. I'd like to think I've improved a little in the past 5-6 years.

I should try to find my old negatives sometime because I've got some cosplays from 2001 Wizard World Chicago.